"Welcome to the Party, Pal!"

Whew! I survived birthday and Thanksgiving season! I have a slightly elongated holiday season in my life. It starts at the end of September, when my mother’s birthday begins a huge string of birthdays—from relatives to many of my friends—that last right through middle of November. And THEN I start dealing with the ACTUAL holidays.

This birthday season was more special than most, as it was also my sister’s 40th birthday. My sister is a year and eight days older than I am, which means a lot to me on milestones like this one…as in, I get to say “Ha, ha, I’m still in my thirties for one more year!” and stick out my tongue and make various “nyah nyah” noises. My mother and I wanted to do something special for it, but neither of us could afford anything TOO special, I’m afraid. What we ended up with, though, was quite special. It was a just a dinner at the Spaghetti Factory here in Sac (a tradition in my family), but one that was attended by close to seventy people. We flew my sister and my niece in from Denver for it (and she surprised my step-father by bringing my step-brother, Cameron, along without telling anyone (except me)), and folks from all three sides of our family (don’t you love modern family geography?) showed up, along with a number of old friends, to celebrate with her. And a little with me. Turns out we couldn’t actually do this on her birthday date, due to scheduling difficulties (hers), so we did it on MY birthday weekend. My mother tried to make it a dual party, but I slapped that idea down. It’s her 40TH! The party should be all about her. So it was, for the most part (I got a good helping of cards and goodies, though). What a spectacle it was. I’m sure K.C. remembers attending my big 21st birthday party, the one thrown in that hall in Folsom where EVERYONE in my life showed up. I think it was more than two-hundred people (my memory’s getting bad. Was it more than that?). That was the last time, really, that all of our three families (Moons, Bryants and O’Connells) were all together like this. So Shelley’s party was quite a surreal scene for me (again), seeing all these people who don’t normally occupy the same reality in one place (it was kind of like Crisis…without the Anti-Monitor).

The party continued for one part of the family (the Bryants…my stepfather’s side) at the hotel many of them, including my sister, were staying at. This part ended up being a big gift for Jack (stepdad). I can’t even remember a time when all eight of his kids (he includes me and my sister in that figure) were in the same place at the same time, and we all stayed up late into the night talking and laughing (and drinking), and we were able to get a bunch of awesome photos of all of us. As Jack’s birthday is November 15th, this ended up being an early gift for him, and one he won’t soon forget.

All my stepfather's kids in one place. Like, NEVER happens.

And in the middle of all that, I had the official Forte 20th anniversary to deal with! Since we already had our get-together over the summer, there was no evening to plan, but I did have to rush to get a couple of goodies done for that. More on that below.

Thanksgiving was quite an adventure. My mother and stepfather, just this fall, moved back to Northern California for a new job. This is the closest they’ve lived to me since 1993, and my mother is way too giddy about the new arrangement. They’re right near Lakeport, which is a good two hours (maybe two and a half) from me. I’ve seen them a few times since they’ve arrived, but not too many, since their schedule and mine has been pretty tight thus far. But while we were all at my sister’s party, talk of Thanksgiving came up, and it was decided that there should be a family gathering (of Bryants) at Mom and Jack’s house that they’re staying at up there. This seemingly simple idea quickly got out of control, and it became a little more complicated. And it ended up looking pretty massive.

My mother had to be in Denver for a few days at my sister’s place beforehand, so things went down this way. She, my sister and my niece were flying in from Denver on Wednesday afternoon, and I was to get off work (as my office was closing early for the holiday) and go pick them up and drive us all up there. To tell you the truth, the way airline travel was that day, I was pretty surprised that their flight only ended up delayed by two hours. This would good with me, as it gave me a couple more hours at the office (the last one in the building) to catch up on stuff. So by the time I grabbed them and we got underway, it was around 7pm. We stopped for a quick dinner, and then hit the drive—one that started, simply enough, on I-5, but then got onto Hwy 20, then Hwy 53, then to a highway I can’t even remember the name of, the roads got windier and narrower the further up the mountain we got. The folks, you see, are living in the woods, staying at the home (one of the homes) of their boss, who offered them the space while the job goes on. I never would have found this place without Mom in the van to navigate (especially in the dark as we were), and we finally got in around 10pm. I had my own room (with my own sliding door out to the deck that overlooked the pond…pretty cool), while my sister and niece shacked up in the living room. To start…

The view from my bedroom. Not a bad wake up in the morning.

The initial plan had seemed pretty cool. The big family thing, due to everyone’s schedule, was planned to be on Friday, not Thursday. So the actual Thanksgiving Day was to be very relaxed and limited – with just my immediate family there. We were all looking forward to that, not just for the peace and quiet, but for the chance for us to all get to spend some rare time alone together. Well, that didn’t happen. Jack’s daughter Cindy called and decided that she and all her kids were going to show up Thursday and just stay through the weekend. Ah, well. Exit peace…enter psychotic screaming pre-schoolers! Ah, they’re good kids, really. They’re just…really out of control. Trying at times, great at others. So they all piled in on Thanksgiving Day, and most of the women-folk set to work getting all the cooking and prep done for the day to follow. After watching some football, us useless men-folk ended up getting a couple of Texas Hold-Em tournaments going. Well, and one woman-folk…my step-niece Alicia sat in, and turned out to be 21-year old card shark. She took the first tourney. I managed to take the second. All the while, the kids ran around and knocked things over and burst into screaming tears at random intervals. At least they were occasionally hypnotized by the Pixar DVDs we kept running on the BIGass TV in the home’s living room.

And just when we were all about to turn in, we got the call from another step-sister of mine (Lisa) who was supposed to be showing up the next day. But guess what? They were showing up late tonight instead! Surprise! Oy… But we managed to have room for all (sleeping bags all around). The good news was that a couple of families had to back out at the last minute. That’s good news because I have NO idea where we would have put them all.

Thanksgiving Day was awesome for adults and kids alike. As I mentioned, there was a pond there right next to the house, and the owner had a couple of boats out there, so folks got to get on the water. The owner also had a couple of these WICKED little two-stroke motor low-profile go-carts that the young guys just had to try (and raced all over every paved road on the area). The owner also had fishing poles in the garage, so some fished. There were also several kids’ bikes there in the garage, so the kids got to ride them all around. We ended up having our meal in the early afternoon, out on the deck facing the water before the sun went behind the hills, and it was a great spread (and there was plenty to eat, because we had planned on about a dozen more people). The rest of the day was go-carts and fishing and walks in the woods and card games and laughs and talking. Most of the talking was between me and my step-brother-in law Rick (he and Wendy had been the last ones to show up, on Friday). Great guy who’s been through a lot (cancer), and we talked for hours about writing, music, film, and, oddly, quantum physics and string theory. Unfortunately, having been through a lot, he’s got a bit of a problem with the drink these days. He somehow ended up boiling down the second (unused) turkey in a couple of pots on the (gas) stove to start the long preparations for turkey barley soup. Well, I’m not quite sure of all the circumstances involved, but apparently one of the pots boiled over, and turkey grease hit open flame, and WOOSH! I heard the noise, I looked over, and could see a wall of flame from the stove up to the kitchen ceiling. It was one of those frozen moments where I suddenly realized that the (all-wood) house we were in could literally go up on flames, and very quickly. The fire alarm went off immediately. And I’m not sure what Jack did or how he did it so fast, but within moments, the fire was out, leaving us with a house full of smoke (a smell that made me think of what Nightcrawler’s teleportation would smell like…if he was a turkey) that we quickly aired out by opening doors and windows. Fortunately, Rick did not go up in flames, and there was no real visible signs of fire in the kitchen…and the turkey pots were still boiling. And so, on he went. At this point I posted myself in the kitchen for pretty much the duration of the evening kept him talking. COULD have just been a simple boil-over that his drinking had nothing to do with. Or not. I thought all our talking might sober him up a bit. Seemed to be. Until he started taking more shots of brandy. Hmmm. Well, regardless, sometime after midnight, when everyone was starting to lay out the sleeping bags and try to call it a night, the turkey boiling was done, he’d gotten the stock, he’d picked of all the good turkey by hand, and damned if the next day didn’t have a lunch that involved a really awesome turkey soup. He knew what he was doing. He just almost started another California wildfire doing it… As I said, he’s been through a lot. And he knows his drinking has reached a problem stage (something else he and I talked about). I think he’s about to the point where he’s about to do something about it. I’m going to do my best to help him out if I can.

Family wackiness in the woods

Aside from the flames, the other drama came on Saturday, before we all started pulling out. Remember all that stuff I talked about—boats, go-carts, fishing poles, bikes, etc?—that belonged to the owner? Well, seems the owner hadn’t actually given permission for the use of that stuff. And the owner also showed up on Saturday. I missed a lot of that, but I gather, from what I gleaned, that he was not pleased. It’s not really as though my folks had so much given other permission to use the stuff…it just kind of happened. The boats were no issue, from what I can tell. However, the use of the go-carts was…particularly because a piece of one of them had broken off and was found on the road (by the owner, who would not have known they’d been used if not for that). And the bikes. These bikes were his kids’ bikes. And the bikes were strewn all of the property by OUR kids (being kids and all) and thrown down in the dirt or leaves. Myself, I had had no idea that these bikes belonged to the owner…I’d just assumed our kids had brought them. Anyway, from what little I heard, he was polite about it and all, but wasn’t pleased. Come on, would you be? You come back to your home that you’re letting a couple of people stay at, and all their family is there going through and using all your belongings? I felt pretty embarrassed about it (not as if I used any of it, of course…). Not as much as my folks, though. And keep in mind that this is their boss. Oops. I feel really bad for them about it, because they were just trying to make it a great weekend for everyone, and here was all this stuff, and everyone started using it and enjoying it… It was just one of those situations that got out of control. I hope that doesn’t linger as a problem for them with their boss/landlord (we’ll see if he asks that they not invite company up again. EVER).

Uncomfortable social situation aside, everyone still left having had a great holiday together, and it’s one that the kids, I’m sure, will always remember. My niece, for one, doesn’t have a yard at her house (not a real one) and never gets a chance to go running around in the woods. That’s the kind of stuff childhood memories are made of. Adventuring with your cousins at grandma’s house in the woods, riding bikes, climbing things, seeing who can throw a rock furthest into the pond. Definitely glad I was able to be there to be a part of it, and get some great pictures to remember it by.

This Time Around

I told some of you to not expect anything from me this time around, due to my need to take a break and get to some other projects in my life. Well, that’s half true. I do have a submission this time, but it’s stuff you already heard about on the ‘Times board on 11/5. So consider that to have been a sneak preview, but it counts as an actual submission, dagnabit!

Yes, after this, I will finally shut up about the Forte 20th anniversary (hold the applause, please). When the actual date came (November 5th…though the anniversary in the Forte world itself is November 4th), I felt I needed to do something to commemorate it, and take a look at how our Forte characters were celebrating the event. In the previous ‘Times issue, I’d mapped out how “Forte20 Week” was happening in Forte’s Seattle. Seemed to make sense to me that a city so proud of its heroes—heroes who had, in two decades, become the new global standard for their kind—would put on a hell of a bash, and I decided they wanted to take a whole week to do it. Instead of Forte running around the world to meet with people and do interviews and attend events, it was decided that the world could just come to Forte, instead. This led to an event of near-Olympics-level planning, and a swarm of world media and Forte fans flooding into Seattle (a huge financial boon for the city, much like Comic-Con does for San Diego, but on a much bigger scale). I had previously broken down the calendar of events on the Forte20 Media Guide page I’d made (hosted by the Forte Museum, of course), but I decided it’d be fun to actually jump into it instead of just talk about it. I also wanted to get a big (if brief) picture of a “real-time” moment with the surviving Forte heroes, twenty years after it all began, and see what was going on in their heads.

So I wrote the story called “20”, which can be found on the Forte Expanded Universe page, which uses Dr. Jackal as my “eyes” to what’s going on. It focuses on just a few minutes of time at the end of the whole affair, the grand culmination, but really gives us a look, though Jack’s memories and feelings, of the Forte history and its heroes, and how much of a family they’ve all became. I used it to relive some memories, and to create some new moments we’ve never actually “seen” in Forte, fleshing out some of the history we missed between the campaign and the web rebirth and adding some details to enrich the existing years. And I wanted it to convey some of my own emotion about all the years of friendship I’ve had with the whole Forte gang, using our alter-egos as a big metaphor for that. I liked how it turned out. I hope you enjoyed (or will enjoy) it.

And the second part of the anniversary gift was the photo gallery showing twenty years of fun with the Forte gang, with old shots from the gaming tables and Comic-Con trips to dinners we’ve had together to things like the 20th anniversary Seattle trip. A little trip down memory lane for all involved (and for those who were along for the ride, as many Forte pals show up in these shots). So take a twenty-year journey along with us, will you? And experience some true fashion and hair mistakes along the way…

I guess there was a third part, too. While I thought it would have been great to have the first 100 Forte issues up on the Forte Prime site in time for the anniversary, I only managed to get 75. But they're up there. Fun readin'!

As is my tradition each issue now, I’ve also updated the Forte.com page with new calendar and message board additions for your reading fun, adding new snapshots of modern-day Forte life. See what your favorite Forte heroes are up to and chatting about!

Oh, and just a couple of new additions to the Forte 2000 Art Gallery this time (see how low my money is?). One is from K.C.--a Dyna Girl appropriately-named "cheesecake" shot by Mike Powell--that he got Aaron as a birthday gift. And the new Sean Harrington Dr. Jackal Christmas shot that you already saw on the cover. This, again, is why it's cool to have artists who know you and your characters so well. That "Sabrina" stocking was all his idea. Fun stuff.

The Big Break

Again, as I told some of you, I just needed to take a break from regular ‘Times stuff, even if just for a little bit. I have so many other things going on in my life that I’m trying to get to, and it was starting to feel like my life was one big ‘Times deadline. So I made a (hard) choice to actually leave the ‘Times projects behind for a bit (with the anniversary interruption keeping me from total commitment). Glad I did. I cherish my creative time, and the escape it gives me from “real life”, but I was starting to feel a little tied down, like everything creative I was doing was “have to” instead of “want to”. I just wanted to relax and feel that pleasure of creating what I want, when I want, and going where my imagination took me instead of with what was due. It’s been good. Part of the result of that has been my pair of main blogs (regular and geek-flavored) that’s been an amazing release. And that’s actually led to some possible publication opportunities, too, down the road (more on that later). I did something that I’ve wanted to do for a long time, which is just sit down, get a story idea, and start writing it and see where it goes. What’s resulted is the first chapter (I think I’m about halfway done) of a science fiction story called “Mourning Glory” that I plan to post up on my web page once it’s done. And then continue it…if I feel like it. Might turn into an online novel, might just be something I do once and never get back to. Don’t know. Not thinking that far ahead. Just spreading my wings and taking a little ride on the winds.

I’ve also got some ideas for some publishable comic stuff that I’ve been working on, one of which I’m thinking of trying to sell to Slave Labor if I can find the right artist. The other is more of a kids thing, a genre I’ve been wanting to try out for quite some time (think Disney Channel), and I’m pretty excited about that…again, if I find just the right artist for it. I’m patient. Still got a lot of prelim to do on it. In the middle of all the writing, I’ve actually gotten some reading done, too. Mostly comic stuff, a rare pleasure I’ve been without for some time. I’ve been read-reading Uncanny X-Men from issue #94 on, just to bask in the Claremont/Byrne glory days. I even managed to work my way though some non-fiction book reading, too, though I still find myself preferring screen reading to reading actual books, so I may need to start exploring more eBook options. I’ve also managed to watch some more TV, trying out some new network shows (and ditching all but a couple already) and catching up on the occasional DVD watch (I fell off watching Smallville about three years ago, so I bought seasons 4 and 5 (there was a big Amazon sale) and am trying to work my way through those (not so easy with the network stuff to watch)). Even started watching some of my DVD movies once in a while. And, on top of it all, I’ve started to hook up with people , on occasion, instead of constantly telling them “no” because I always have a deadline looming. So that’s been good.

Overall, I needed to give the Forte stuff a break (mostly), and I think that’ll get me much more into when I return. For now, still working on other stuff, which might actually get me more than just enjoyment. But soon enough, I’ll be back on the Forte tip, probably next issue, I’m sure.

Next Time...On "The 'F' Word"...

NO idea. We’ll see where my creative time takes me. But in the meantime, sure hope everyone has a swell Christmas and a great New Year!

Michael O’Connell
Who Loves Forte Enough To Let It Go...Briefly!